Eastern Passage

by Farley Mowat

  “I could never have believed the bombing was that bad. How did anyone survive?”

  “Few would have if the Nazis had been able to do what they intended. The idea was to blow and burn London right off the map. Show us what Total War really meant. Knock Britain to her knees. Only the RAF’s guts and Goering’s stupidities prevented the whole city being reduced to slag.”

  “Aye,” said our driver, “they bastards would have buried us. And yet there’s folks thinks we ought to feel guilty-like for what we done to German cities when we got the upper hand. Guilty!” he spat out the cab window. “Cor! When I hears that from a fare, I brings him here, for a look-see whether he likes or no.”

  We toured the cathedral. Then it was time for a pint and a sausage roll in a nearby pub before tackling the Tower, which was high on Fran’s obligatory list. It seethed with visitors. We walked the old stones, viewing jewels, Cockneys, cannon, Beefeaters, dungeons, Bostonians, old armour, Torontonians, et al., until I’d had a surfeit.

  My attention strayed to the Tower ravens. One old fellow standing in the middle of a bit of greensward was amusing himself by playing the tourist. He would peer incredulously at some fragment of brick or stone then shriek astonishment to a circle of fellow ravens, while casting gleeful looks at passing humans. I tipped him a conspiratorial wink.

  I lay awake for a while that night thinking about the Tower ravens; the myriad coots, ducks, geese, and swans on the park ponds; the house sparrows, starlings, and pigeons in the squares; and something else our taxi driver had told us about. Foxes, stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, rabbits, and pheasants were all colonizing the urban wastelands produced by the bombing. “It’s old Mother Nature taking back her own,” he’d said. Nurturing that consoling thought, I drifted off to sleep.

  On Monday morning we took delivery of a spanking-new, claret-coloured Hillman Minx convertible, which we named Elizabeth in honour of the young queen. Liz was the first car (Lulu Belle excepted) I had ever owned, and very sporty she looked as we made our way out of London into Kent, where the smoke of the city soon gave way to a translucent haze of sea air drifting inland from the distant Channel.

  Reaching Dover, we booked into the Hôtel de France, which, unfortunately, had been spared destruction by the German siege guns across the Channel on Cap Gris Nez. The food was abominable; the service surly; the bedding damp; and relays of motorcyclists staged impromptu races around the block throughout the night. At dawn the gulls took over, perching on our window ledge to scream lewd comments and maledictions at us.

  Next morning at the Western Docks we watched fearfully as our pretty little car was seized by a gantry crane, swung high into the sky, and dropped into the ferry’s hold. The vessel sailed in heavy fog, which lifted as we approached France at Gris Nez. We stared in awe at the monolithic gun emplacements from which the Germans had shelled England. They looked ready to let loose another broadside at any instant, but their day was done. Even before war’s end, they had been outmoded by launching ramps from which flying bombs and V-2 rockets were lobbed at London.

  Once ashore, we headed south toward the distant Mediterranean, stopping for a night at Avalon, an ancient place perched on a granite outcrop overlooking a tributary of the Seine. The town was in the throes of a huge party honouring the Maquis – guerrilla fighters in the recent war who, despite the abject surrender of their country by Petain, had persisted in a long and bloody struggle against the Nazi invaders.

  As Fran and I made our way down one of the steep and crowded streets toward the heart of the town, we were accosted by a hatchet-featured man wearing the distinctive beret of the Maquis. He introduced himself as Georges Roussel and forthrightly asked what we were up to. When I explained that I was a Canadian army veteran retracing my wartime travels, he kissed both of us fervently then slapped his beret on my head.

  “But how wonderful! We are comrades, non? You and your petite must help celebrate beating the bastardly Boche!”

  He brooked no argument. Taking us one on either arm, he guided us into the crowd, stopping here and there to introduce us to his many friends. It was as if we had been born in Avalon and had returned there after a long absence. Nothing was too good for us. We visited so many cafés and drank so many toasts that we lost count of everything, including time. I remember marching behind brass bands in the blue-clad ranks of Resistance fighters, being dazzled by fireworks, and – vaguely – being escorted back to our hotel by a crowd singing “Auprès de ma Blonde” at the tops of their voices.

  We were seriously tempted to stay a while in Avalon for I had a great interest in the Resistance fighters and wanted to learn more about them, but I was impelled to reach the scene of our own battles as soon as possible. So we slipped out of Avalon next morning, bound south for Italy down the old Route Napoléon.

  Reaching the shore of the Middle Sea, we drove east to Menton, where a charming Italian customs officer welcomed us to his country. The temptation to linger in one of the many little villages on the Italian Riviera was great, but since we still had many miles to go we pushed on to Milan, then eastward along the broad Po Valley. A few miles beyond Bologna, we turned off the main highway onto a dirt track where, in 1944, the German army had stopped the northward advance of First Canadian Division.

  I was on familiar ground.

  Crossing the Senio River, we came to Bagnacavallo, in whose ruined houses my companions and I had sought shelter from shells, freezing rain, and the imminence of death during Christmas week of 1944.

  A small hotel overlooked the central square. We parked Liz and pushed aside the beaded fly curtains of the ground-floor ristorante to enter a dark and cavernous room that was marvellously cool and silent except for the buzzing of a bluebottle. An old man emerged from a back room to serve us sticky glasses of Marsala.

  “You seem really far away,” Fran murmured to me as we sipped the strong sweet wine.

  “I’ve been in this room before, and slept upstairs,” I said, “only then the whole front wall had been smashed open and we parked our jeep in here. One night a shell came through the roof, failed to explode, and bounced down two flights of stairs to whomp into the driver’s seat, where we found it next morning, harmless as a sleeping cat.”

  It may have been the Marsala, or perhaps the white heat shimmering off the walls of Bagnacavallo. Or it may have been the odour of urine, wine lees, cooking oil, and dust – the “burnt umber” smell of small Italian towns. Whatever. The floodgates of memory were swinging open, releasing a deluge of recollections.

  Winter is not the season to fight battles on the Adriatic coast of Italy. We Canadians had learned this the hard way during the winter of 1943. The high command, however, either had not learned the lesson or in 1944 deliberately chose to ignore it.

  As December approached, First Canadian Corps was ordered to “burst out” of the narrow corridor of coastal plain lying between the mountains and the Adriatic Sea, then sweep north past the coastal city of Ravenna and open the way for a triumphant advance by the rest of British Eighth Army into the Po Valley and northern Italy. The staff officers at Allied Forces Headquarters who contrived this grandiose plan and cheerfully code-named it Operation Chuckle had decreed that we Canadians would have the honour of making the breakout.

  We were ordered to begin by attacking across three major rivers, several canals, and innumerable drainage ditches all running between high and steep embankments from the mountains to the sea. All were in spate, and their waters – mountain torrents – were bitterly cold. Each was defended by elite German troops well dug in and well armed.

  Chuckle began December 2. The following day the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment tried to force a crossing of the high-banked Lamone River. The weather was atrocious. Rain, sleet, and snow were turning the coastal plains into a half-frozen quagmire. Nevertheless, as darkness fell on December 3, Baker and Charlie, the two assault companies, began sloshing their way over a flooded landscape toward the start line, which was the base of the south
ern dyke containing the raging Lamone.

  Ten minutes before midnight, our saturated soldiers reached the dyke and flung themselves down on sodden ground to snatch what rest they could before zero hour sent them scrambling up the slope and over the top. The minutes swiftly passed, until suddenly the night exploded with sullen thunder as our artillery fired the opening rounds of a great barrage intended to keep the German defenders deep in their dugouts and slit trenches until the Canadian infantry was on top of them.

  Captain Cliff Broad, Baker Company’s commander and my close friend, was lying just below the crest of the near dyke when our barrage began. He flattened himself to earth at the wail of approaching shells, which, instead of exploding amongst the enemy, came thundering down on Baker and Charlie companies. The earth shook and heaved. Red and yellow flashes illuminated the charnel scene as shrapnel sliced through steel helmets, bones, and flesh. A biting white smoke added its special horror as phosphorous grenades hanging from men’s belts were hit by shrapnel and exploded, immolating those who carried them.

  The barrage ceased, and for a moment the living lay in the awful silence of the aftermath, immobile, stunned. Then the cries of the wounded began – a threnody of agony. Half the men of Baker were dead or wounded. Charlie, which had gone into battle with a strength of only two platoons, was now reduced to less than one.

  The regiment should have been immediately withdrawn. Instead, it was told to carry on as planned, and the remaining two infantry companies – Able and Dog – were ordered forward. They plodded up through a false dawn that provided just enough light to avoid trampling their dead comrades scattered below the dykes and somehow managed to scramble across the river, scale the far bank, and dig themselves in while enduring a ferocious enemy counterattack.

  Reinforcements were desperately needed, but none were available. Cliff Broad took the forty or so survivors of his company across the Lamone and into an attack that drove the Germans back some three hundred yards. Then Baker’s men were forced to go to ground in the middle of a vineyard by a hail of mortar bombs and small-arms’ fire. Enemy tanks began to converge upon them. Nevertheless, they held until it was all too obvious that to remain where they were would be to die where they were.

  Broad gave the order to get out.

  Dragging some of the wounded and under intense fire, the survivors scuttled back to the river. Some drowned during the crossing. The remainder, joined now by what was left of Able and Dog, tumbled over the crest of the southern dyke and rolled heavily down its slope. Now they were back at the start line where, nine hours earlier, they had suffered a holocaust from our own guns.

  For five days the weather drew a shroud over the Lamone killing grounds. Rain beat down unceasingly. The soil became so saturated that slit trenches filled almost as soon as they were dug. Wet snow plashed a wasteland that had once been neatly patterned vineyards and fields. The only shelter to be found was in a few stone-built farm buildings, which were being methodically pulverized by German guns.

  Relationships between us and the remaining civilians grew closer. Since we shared a world of destruction, we began to share other things. Cans of bully beef found their way into the pots of pasta that nurtured paesani italiani and soldati canadesi alike. An old woman mixed hot wine with the juice of a few scrofulous oranges to put heart into patrols that had to feel their way into the black, bullet-studded nights.

  On December 10 the regiment returned to action in Eighth Army’s final attempt to justify Operation Chuckle by breaking out of the sodden coastal strip into the open reaches of the Po Valley. By the 12th our forward companies had overrun the German positions on the Canale Vecchio and the Canale Naviglio and were pushing on. Baker Company had the farthest to go. Its objective, a cluster of farm buildings called San Carlo, lay a thousand yards beyond the Naviglio. Charlie, in a supporting role, squelched forward to the sparse shelter of a ditch halfway between the Canale and San Carlo, then dug itself in. Able struck out along a lateral track and was soon fighting desperately for possession of a few scattered houses. What remained of Dog Company was in reserve at battalion headquarters, a shattered farmhouse between the Vecchio and the Naviglio.

  By dawn next day, Baker had taken San Carlo and was being counterattacked by at least a battalion of infantry supported by tanks and mobile artillery. At this juncture, our commanding officer, Lt. Col. Donald Cameron, hunched over his radio set, heard a static-filled message from Baker.

  “… attack by heavy tanks … look like Panthers … lots of infantry … ammo almost gone … without tank support we’ll soon be goners too … you want us to hang on or try to pull out? …”

  The message ended in a burst of static.

  The decision Cameron had to make was of the kind that ages men and withers their souls. He could not sanction a withdrawal. Too much depended on this bridgehead being held until reinforcements, and especially tanks and anti-tank guns, could reach us.

  Holding the microphone close to his mouth, he slowly and distinctly repeated the words: “You must remain … You must remain … Our tanks are coming … You must remain …”

  He paused – but there was no reply. Baker’s radio was off the air.

  Mired in frigid mud, the men of Charlie Company watched helplessly as the Germans closed in on San Carlo. They watched as Mark IV and Panther tanks methodically shattered each building, reducing each in turn to smoking rubble.

  Meanwhile, Able, in houses along the dyke wall, was under attack from two self-propelled guns and a strong force of infantry. Cut off from one another, two of Able’s three depleted platoons fled back across the canal, leaving only Nine platoon, reduced now to fewer than a dozen men, to hold the position.

  Then it was Charlie’s turn. With the leisureliness of those who are assured of victory, the Germans turned on Charlie. The men of its Thirteen Platoon raised their heads during a lull in the bombardment to find themselves staring into the muzzles of a score of German rifles and carbines. Thirteen Platoon vanished and was not heard from again.

  The CO did what he could. What remained of Dog Company was ordered forward but, suffering from the effects of seven days of shell-fire and the loss of most of its officers and NCOs, it had also lost heart. Three times it set out for the canal, and three times turned away from the gates of Hell.

  Here is Padre Freddy Goforth’s description of the scene at battalion headquarters.

  “From dawn until late afternoon the house was under constant bombardment – moaning Minnies, 88s, everything in the book came at us. Early on, a shed on the south side was demolished by a direct hit. There were a lot of casks of vino in the shed and a number of men had bedded down amongst them and were trying to rest. The casks were all perforated but most of the men miraculously escaped and ran into the main building, soaked in wine. The wine flowed across the floor behind them and for the rest of the day we lived in the sour stink of vino fumes.

  “As time passed the place grew more and more crowded. The remnants of Able Company found shelter here, along with those of Dog Company. By this time the battle had begun to look like Armageddon for us. Only Charlie was left in front and the messages coming through were increasingly desperate. ‘The enemy is pressing close.’ ‘We’re running out of ammo.’ ‘What are your orders?’

  “I would have defied anyone to tell what was passing through Cameron’s mind as he quietly told the signaller to reply, ‘Help is coming. Hold on.’

  “Cameron’s coolness steadied us though we were sure the promise of relief was just a pipe dream. With enemy tanks crawling around a few hundred yards in front and capable of crossing the Naviglio, and remembering that behind us were two canals that as far as we knew had not yet been bridged and were impassable to our tanks, we couldn’t see we had much of a hope.

  “Suddenly we heard the rumble of tank treads outside. Our common thought was, ‘Well, this is goodbye.’

  “Then someone peered out a window and yelled ‘They’re ours!’ and then we knew how the boys must hav
e felt at the siege of Lucknow so long ago when they heard the skirl of the pipes approaching. Coming up the road toward us was a squadron of British Columbia Dragoon tanks swinging their seventeen-pounder guns from side to side. We heard later that the first of them had crossed the Lamone before the bolts on the bridge were tight.”

  The Dragoons wasted no time. Finding a ford, the tanks rumbled over the Naviglio, firing as they went. One appeared outside the ruins of the house where a remnant of Charlie Company was making its final stand. As it nosed around the corner of the building, it was hit by a German anti-tank shell. The wounded gunner crawled out of the turret and some of Charlie’s men raced out and dragged him under cover. All the gunner said was “Did we make it in time?”

  They had made it in time.

  Early one afternoon, at an hour when sensible people were letting their dinners digest and avoiding the heat of the day, Fran and I drove along a track beside the Canale Naviglio toward a cluster of white houses glistening in the sun. We drove into a courtyard flanked by spanking-new buildings standing four-square under red-tiled roofs. I thought that if this was San Carlo it surely was risen from the grave. I got out and stood uncertainly, waiting for a sign. All was motionless except for a garishly green lizard scampering across a newly laid stone pavement.

  Then a door opened and a slim young man came out. He advanced somewhat timidly for, though Fran and I could not know it, we were the first foreigners to come here since the war.

  “Si, signore,” he replied in answer to my question. “This is San Carlo and you and the signora” – he smiled at Fran – “are very welcome to Casa Balardini. Please to come in.”

  We were received in the cool, dark room reserved for ceremony. Roused from their naps by a stentorian cry from Signore Balardini, a big man with straggling moustaches and a belly that gave him presence, the rest of the family came stumbling, running, and striding into the room. Spanning several generations, there seemed no end to them. They clustered around us, touching our shoulders, smiling, laughing, and bombarding us with questions.